(CNSNews.com) - The official death toll from the earthquake that struck southwestern China this week has reached 15,000, but with tens of thousands of people still missing, it could climb much higher.

Premier Wen Jiabao, who is directing a highly visible emergency response to Monday's 7.8-magnitude quake, said 100,000 military personnel and police are involved in rescue and relief effort. China's Central Military Commission declared it to be "the most imperative and significant political task at present."

Supplies are being airdropped into areas of Sichuan province that remain hard to reach because of rockslides and torn-up roads. Troops also have parachuted into some cut-off parts near the epicenter, the Xinhua news agency reported.

A foreign ministry spokesman said China welcomed pledges of foreign relief aid, although officials in Japan, Australia and South Korea said offers to send specialized rescue personnel had been declined because of transportation and communication difficulties, including blocked roads and closed airports.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a television interview that he had cabled his Chinese counterpart, offering to send an emergency response team "to go in and quickly identify people in rubble and in buildings."

"Our people are ready to move should they be required," he said.

The Japan Rescue Association, a non-governmental organization that has in the past deployed rescuers to disaster zones inside Japan and around the world, said it had rescue personnel and sniffer dogs on standby while Japanese government fire and disaster agency workers were also prepared.

South Korea's foreign ministry said 40 rescue personnel and 20 medical staff were on standby.

Taiwan also offered to send its national rescue team, but the offer was reportedly declined.

Lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of outgoing President Chen Shui-bian urged Beijing to set aside political differences with Taiwan and accept the help.

"Humanitarian assistance should be free from political considerations," said lawmaker Wong Chin-chu while colleague Pan Men-an urged Beijing not to reject help simply in order not to "lose face."

Pan pleaded with China not to emulate the military junta in Burma (Myanmar), which has been criticized for limiting foreign help after a cyclone early this month that may have cost as many as 100,000 lives.

Privately donated relief supplies were due to be flown in two specially-approved charter flights from Taiwan to Sichuan province on Thursday. Taiwan's government announced it would raise $65 million through government agencies and the public, to donate to the victims of the quake.

After Taiwan suffered a major earthquake disaster in 1999, it accused China of putting politics ahead of saving lives during the critical first few days after the quake by requiring all international help to be channeled through the mainland.

Bitterness of the incident lingers, and the 1999 experience is regularly recalled when Taiwan makes its annual bid -- unsuccessful thus far, thanks to China's opposition -- to join or be allowed observer status at the U.N.'s World Health Organization.

"Some could argue that Taiwanese should not bother sending aid to China because of Beijing's incessant bullying and threats directed at Taiwan," the Taipei Times said in an editorial Thursday.

"But harboring an eye-for-an-eye mentality and failing to meet obligations as human beings would lower this administration to the level of China - or perhaps even Myanmar - which is not what Taiwan is all about."

Transparency

Meanwhile, Chinese official media are giving ongoing blanket coverage to the relief and rescue effort as well as regularly updating casualty figures, in what observers say is a marked shift from their traditional tendency to play down domestic disasters or crises.

The Communist Party-run People's Daily said in an editorial that the earthquake was a "test" for China, and highlighted the fast response by the party's leadership and top bodies.

"Faced with the disaster, we have become still more united, still more cohesive, still more composed and still more sure of ourselves, and such spirit and strength constitute the invincible, priceless assets of the Chinese nation," it said.

Both the People's Daily and the state-run China Daily commented on the importance of transparency, particularly in preventing the spread of uncontrolled rumors and panic.

Both noted that the earthquake had occurred just days after new regulations on the public disclosure of government information went into effect.

When a huge earthquake hit Tangshan in China's northeast Hebei province in 1976, the government restricted information about the disaster, and only three years later did Xinhua report that 240,000 people had been killed.

The earlier secrecy had led to speculation and guesswork, with some Hong Kong media claiming that 700,000 lives had been lost. The eventually reported death toll still made the Tangshan quake the second deadliest ever recorded (after one in the 16th century, also in China, which killed more than 800,000 people.)

More recently, China was widely criticized in 2003 for playing down an outbreak of SARS, a flu-like disease that originated in southern China and spread across Asia and as far as Canada, killing more than 770 people. After months of secrecy, Beijing finally admitted the extent of the crisis, apologized for the cover-up and instituted stricter health measures.

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